2014-12-26
【聯合報╱By RACHEL DONADIO╱王麗娟譯】
Sweden’s Storybook Heroine Ignites a Debate on Race
Since she burst onto the scene in 1945 with her mismatched socks, abundant freckles and two red braids sticking straight out of her head, Pippi Longstocking, a rambunctious, joyful girl strong enough to lift horses, has become a touchstone for generations of children who have read her in 65 languages .
In Sweden, Pippi is something more: a national treasure and embodiment of the country’s egalitarian spirit. So when the Swedish national broadcaster announced this fall that it would edit two scenes that it considered offensive in a 1969 television series about Pippi — including one in which she says her father is “king of the Negroes,” using a Swedish word now viewed as a racial slur — it caused an uproar.
她腳穿兩隻不搭的襪子、滿臉雀斑、梳著兩根向外直直伸出的紅髮辮。1945年突然冒出頭，這個很失控、力大到可以扛起馬匹的開心果女孩「長襪子皮皮」，如今已是數個世代兒童的試金石，這些兒童透過65種語言閱讀「長襪子皮皮」。
在瑞典，皮皮的意義不僅止於此，她是國寶，還是瑞典平等精神的化身。因此，瑞典國家電視台今秋宣布計畫將1969年皮皮電視劇集中，他們認為涉及種族汙蔑的兩個場景加以修改時，隨即引發軒然大波。兩個場景之一是皮皮說她的父親是「黑人之王」時，使用了現在視為種族汙蔑的一個瑞典字眼。
The series was based on the Pippi Longstocking books by Astrid Lindgren, the first of which were published between 1945 and 1948. Defenders of the decision, including the heirs of Ms. Lindgren, who died in 2002, said the change respected the spirit of the author. Even in 1970, she had called the term outdated and said she had not meant to offend.
But many others — including tens of thousands of people who answered a Facebook poll on the website of Sweden’s largest daily newspaper this fall — said they opposed the revision .
該劇根據艾絲翠．林德格倫的《長襪子皮皮》童書改編，第一冊發表於1945至1948年間。這項決定的捍衛者，包括2002年去世的林德格倫的繼承人認為，這些修改尊重作者的精神。早在1970年，林德格倫就說這個用詞已不合時宜，還說她從無意冒犯任何人。
然而也有許多人反對，包括今秋在瑞典最大日報網站上以臉書答覆一項民調的數萬網民。
Coming just weeks after a hard-right party with skinhead roots won an unprecedented 13 percent of the vote in national elections, and following other controversies over caricatures in children’s books, the Pippi controversy has tapped into a growing and often uncomfortable debate. It concerns ethnicity in a country that prides itself on its egalitarianism but in which ethnic minorities, a small percentage of the country’s nine million people, have only begun to have a voice.
“When it comes to feminism, we’re better; when it comes to racism, we’re behind,” said the Swedish playwright and novelist Jonas Hassen Khemiri .
事情發生的幾周前，一個有光頭族淵源的強硬右派政黨剛在全國大選中拿下空前的13％選票，一些童書中的諷刺漫畫也才惹起若干爭議，皮皮引發的爭論只是為日益增多且常令人反感的辯論再添一筆。它涉及種族，而瑞典又是個以平等主義自詡，少數民族卻剛開始發聲的國家。瑞典的少數民族僅占900萬人口極小百分比。
瑞典劇作家兼小說家凱密里說：「在女性主義方面，我們優於其他國家；在種族主義上，我們則落後。」
Mr. Khemiri said that in an increasingly globalized world — and after the country had taken in hundreds of thousands of immigrants and asylum seekers in recent years — some Swedes were using Pippi to hold on to a traditional idea of Swedishness.
“The few things that are Swedish have become a battlefield where people are trying to defend their fantasies of that nation,” he said. “It’s very hard to defend this naïve idea of an authentic, simple past .”
凱密里說，世界日益全球化，瑞典近幾年又接納了數十萬移民和尋求庇護者，一些瑞典人正試圖透過皮皮保存傳統況味的瑞典。
他說：「代表瑞典傳統的幾件事物，現在成了戰場，人們試圖捍衛他們對以前那個國家的幻想。捍衛關於原汁原味、單純過去的這個天真想法，其實非常困難。」
Nils Nyman, the head of the family company that oversees the lucrative rights to Ms. Lindgren’s work, said that not making the changes risked distracting from the books’ broader message of “girl power before it was known” as such.
In one scene, the racial slur has been removed so that Pippi now says, “My father is the king!” In the second, Pippi no longer pulls her eyelids upward, pretending to be Asian, yet still sings a mock Chinese song.
Baker Karim, an Afro-Swedish film director , summarized the debate as one in which Swedes said: “ ‘We’re not racist! So could we just keep these racist stereotypes alive because we’re not racist?’ ”
林德格倫作品的著作權價值不菲，由一個家族公司管理，負責人尼曼說，這些童書「在大家還不知道什麼是女力時，傳達了女力的訊息」，不做修改可能減損它的效果。
前述兩個場景中的一個，刪除了種族汙蔑字眼後，皮皮說的話變成「我的父親是國王！」在另一個場景中，皮皮不再將眼皮向上翻，假裝亞洲人，但仍然唱了首模仿中國歌的歌曲。
非洲裔瑞典電影導演卡里姆以瑞典人的如下說法為這項辯論作結：「我們不是種族主義者！既然我們不是種族主義者，何不就讓我們把這些種族主義刻板印象保留下來？」
留言列表
